


The Misadventures of ISO Clu

by LizzyLue



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Irony
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 23:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyLue/pseuds/LizzyLue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu falls, and for his crimes against digital humanity he is cursed with the one fate he cannot accept.<br/>Alternate title: Attack of The Onomatopoeia</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He remembered falling falling falling, suddenly there’s nothing to hold him, no powerful machine roaring beneath him. In his disbelief he forgot how to fall. His feet went up over his head and his head went up over his feet as he spun, again and again, flailing, frantically reaching out to grab hold of something, anything, but he was lost in open space. Then a shape rockets past him, a blur of black and red. As the opportunity arrives, the sleek black casing of a light baton showing in the bloody circuit light, Clu finds his balance.

His arms are on either side of his head, bent at ninety degree angles, and his knees are bent behind his head. He remembers how to fly, because he isn’t lost in space, the air rushes past him, cradling his body with a familiarity. When he locks his arms against his sides he’s rocketing downward, diving toward freedom in that jet compacted inside Rinzlers- Trons light baton. Anticipating Clu’s intent, the other program snatches for the baton first, and holds it out in front of him, fingers working to snap the canister open.

Clu grabs hold and his weight is pulling them both down faster, he tries to wrench his salvation out of Tron’s grasp. He kicks at the black featureless helmet, but Tron stubbornly hangs on, his knee connects with Clu’s stomach, and an elbow crashes into Clu’s forehead. The sysadmins vision fades out, and when his eyes blink open again he’s alone, but a brilliant blue jet is soaring through the sky above his head. The thin shape twists gracefully, dodging daringly, needlessly through the veins of lightning like it has all the time in the world to reach the portal. He’s celebrating his new freedom.

The sea hits his back, greeting him with a cold and dread that reaches through his code and leaves him shaking and vulnerable, after falling from such a height the impact is as painful as smashing into solid rock. She’s all too happy to have him back.

 _“It’s been far too long.”_ He thinks he can hear the waves purr. He struggles against the vengeful data, he kicks his legs, moves his arms. A desperate mantra sounds in his head swim swim swim. With one powerful kick he inches closer to what he deems to be the surface, but as dizzy and disoriented and in pain as he is he has no way of knowing which way is up.

He’s suddenly very aware of the current curling around his limbs, wrapping around his torso, pulsing with a life of it’s own. The current slams against his side with a force so violent his vision fades to black again for a moment, longer? He has no way of knowing. There’s another watery strike to his abdomen, still sore from Tron’s blow.

With the wind knocked out of him, he gasps for air, instead he fills up with his own virus. It burns the inside of his throat and sears into his code with a pain that has him writhing and screaming wordlessly without air. She hits his back, his shoulder, she tosses him, forcing him deeper and deeper down into the dark cursed depths. She’s trying to beat him smooth, like a helpless pebble caught in the tide.

—-

When Clu comes back online, the world is on it’s side. Distantly he can feel the sea slide in around him, and then contract and race back out toward the horizon, leaving him behind on the beach. The continuous, swish hush swish hush, fell into pace beside his breathing.

He’s alive? Why didn’t he drown? Why hadn’t the sea torn him to pieces?  
Clu groaned as he slowly coaxed his body up onto his hands and knees.

The portal had closed. The sky was black, The Grid was black. He’d never experienced such total darkness, he wouldn’t be able to see the hands in front of his face if it weren’t for the light of his circuits… when had that light been so bright?

Something shimmered blindingly at the corner of his eye, he turned his head.

He sees the mark burning a violent yellow on his left forearm, he thinks stupidly. _Oh._ Oh.

He looks down into the water burying his hands, and he sees his wavering reflection.

What he sees puts a snarl on his face and he clenches his fists in the sand, Clu strikes out at the traitorous image with his fist and the data scatters, his reflection shatters. All too soon, it reforms itself on the waters surface.

The yellow lines are vicious and numerous, they look like war paint rather than the delicate, gently placed marks on the faces of his predecessors, he’s forced to think. His nonexistent stomach churns with simulated nausea.

His vision swims. Clu feels sick, doubled over he wretches and hacks up the grease and data he swallowed in the sea until he feels empty and hollow, stomach aching. It splatters against the gritty grey sand, thick and black and poisonous, leaving a sticky residue on his mouth and chin. It smells like rotting rubber and decaying plastic, he gags at the foreign smell, too pungent to a sense that is used to nothing but the uniform null scent that permeates the rest of The Grid. Clu grit his teeth.

_The Sea, the bitch has a sense of irony. Does she think she’s being funny?_

_“I’ll kill myself.”_ He growls in defiance, and he reaches for the disk at his back. He looks at it for a moment in his hands, yellow rings pulsing dangerously, and shifts his grip to plunge the weapon into his own chest. He won’t let her win, she won’t have her abominations back to destroy the scraps that are left of his people. He won’t be turned into her weapon.

The disk slips from his slime slicked fingers. It drops into the water between his legs with a low _caploosh_. He reaches for it, but as he does so the sea recedes again. He tries to chase it with his fingers but it’s already gone, swallowed up by the data, swept far away. He spins where he kneels.

“Hey! Give it back!” He yells toward the horizon, sounding strangely like a child who’d had his toy stolen by another, bigger bully on the playground. For his trouble a particularly large wave rumbles through the sea, as it crashes against the shore he’s soaked through anew, and his mouth and nose are filled up with more of that disgusting viral sea water. He coughs and sputters.

He’s all alone. Alone and cursed. They’ve left him for the other world, the real world, the better world, the true world.

“Rinzler!” He calls. “Flynn!”

He left like he always does, and he didn’t take Clu with him. “Flynn!”

A sound struggles its way up out of his throat, broken and raw, suspiciously like a sob. He wants to be real too, just real enough for his creator to give a damn. Why does everyone else get to go and be real and happy without him?

He’ll have to find himself a new disk, a lightblade, something, but to do that he’ll have to search out other programs. In the distance the city is a dim blue glow, occasionally flickering out, before relighting itself. The flame that refuses to die.

Clu rises to his feet.  
The first of the new ISO’s stumbled towards the remains of Tron City.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sassy Jarvis.

A program darted out from the darkness of the alleyway. For the space of a blink the figure appeared in the light of the quiet and vacant street, before vanishing into the safety of the blackness on the other side. The silhouette was small and quick. He stopped under the archway of a massive structure, pressing his back up against the wall and slipping along it to the inside, head frantically turning left and right as he scoured the area for the program following him. He didn’t have a name, not that he remembered at least, the program was just program.

 

He was being watched. He felt it when he left the main square, alive with violence and busy programs trying to get where they were going without finding themselves victims of it. The synthetic skin of his neck and his back beneath his suit prickled with the uncomfortably feeling, eyes boring holes right through him, analyzing and tearing him apart from a distance. He’s always had good instincts, and he had them to thank for surviving so long as a stray.

He relaxed marginally when he was able to walk into the safety of his hide away.

No one came here, phantoms of the past lived here. Programs avoided the place as if they expected some murderous, long dead program to strike out of the darkness with an activated disk in hand. There were legends and ghost stories to keep the others away, it was safe and no one bothered him here.

His breath caught. The programs head shot up, and he stood as rigid as stone, alert.

There was a sound to his left, footsteps? Or the sound of armor connecting with armor as a program moved? He looked to the shadows from which the noise had come.

“H-Hello?” He called, stuttering, he couldn’t keep his lips still enough the speak properly. “I-Is someone there?”

Silence answered.

The programs hands curled into fists. He set his jaw and stood up straighter, even though every particle in his body shook, he bravely faced the darkness. When he spoke his voice was booming, clear, and threatening. It was comical, like the voice of a lion from a rabbit, perhaps some remnant from a forgotten life as someone stronger and more confident.

“Show yourself!”

His pursuer obliged, and head bent forward to hide his face in the dim light, walked out of the smothering blackness with the thunderous _thud. Thud. Thud._ of his boots against the floor.

Despite the uncharacteristic messiness of his brown hair, falling in the strangers face, the program recognized his fellows distinct circuits instantly. He relaxed with a relieved sag of his shoulders, fearful eyes transformed with hope and trust.

Clu wasn’t seeing the program, but he greedily eyed what was indeed the strays only possession, wrapped around his frail shoulders. The program was glitching, falling apart at the seams, Clu suspected he could derez him with his bare hands if he wanted.

The program was wearing a wide heartbreaking smile that lit up his face and looked painful and sloppy, like he couldn’t quite remember how, like he hadn’t smiled for as long as he could remember. It was entirely likely.

“Clu, Clu sire, you’ve returned for us. You’ll save us from-”

Clu shoved a fist through the programs chest, it caved and collapsed around his hand as easily as the reflection he’d attacked in the sea. No matter, there was no room for glitches, for malware, for weakness in his system. The errors endangered all other programs.

Pieces of the dead crunched under his boots like glass, it was a sickening sound, but comforting in its familiarity. Clu sighed, the slight smile of someone recalling a fond memory on his face. He knelt to gather the white cloak from the ground, that had fluttered languid in the air as it sunk down after it’s crumbling owner.

It belonged to Clu now, he brushed the remaining cubic crystals, built like tiny prisms, from the material. His circuit light refracted inside, giving the bits of code their blue glimmer. As he stood her drew the cloak around himself, and it settled comfortably over his shoulders. Immediately he pulled the hood up to hide the circuits etched into his face. His circuit light caught onto the cloak like fire, climbing, consuming the blue circuits like fuel and transforming them into that blazing yellow.

He walked, down the hall of the cavernous enclosure that in ancient times must have been a lively communal building, a cultural center where ISOs and Basics alike worked and played, came and went regularly every millicycle.

The circuits in the walls that still functioned, sparked and flickered. They couldn’t glow much brighter than a dull grey, struggling to appear blue. The wall to his right abruptly ended, and continued as rows of columns resembling their User world counterparts in Athens. They stood at the top of a staircase that stretched downward into the forsaken metropolis below, providing a full view of his home. He leaned, relaxed against one of the columns overlooking the city.

_How long have I been gone?_ Clu wondered. He thought he could hear the screams from here. This was anarchy, programs slaughtered each other in the streets, buildings crumbled, falling from their places in the skyline as he watched. Where there was light, it was too intense, the city was burning. Blue and orange seas of flame consumed entire sectors.

He understood what had occurred. Not that Clu had been around anyway apparently, but now as an ISO he no longer had the same signature, he’d been reset to a blank neutral state. That meant no clearance, and no administrative privileges. Clu was as good as dead, for all he could do for The Grid, and the The Grid was left without an administrator. The result was panic, hysteria, and terror.

With no one who knew the passwords to regulate the energy supply, there wasn’t nearly enough to go around. Programs murdered each other for what remained. With no one with clearance to repair or modify structure, The Grid itself began to deteriorate under the weight of a build up of common errors. Worst of all, with no one to command his carefully coded sentries, carefully coded with the purpose to follow Clu, they all automatically failed their directives.

The resulting insanity had them destroying everything in sight, they raged down below, attacking programs and inanimate objects alike. His own creations would destroy his system. It hadn’t been only himself The Sea had cursed, but everything he had worked for, the sum of his entire existence. Fury burned in the pit of his stomach, his circuitry flickered dangerously, as if his life were raging to quit on him before he could extinguish it himself.

He hid his face deeper into his hood, he pulled his white cloak tighter around himself, as if he were cold. Programs would recognize his circuits, he had been lucky to spot that stray. It was his fault for liking so much attention he supposed. He didn’t know how programs would react to seeing that their former ISO slaying champion had become the one thing he hated above all else. Unfortunately the program he’d killed for the cloak hadn’t even had a disk that Clu might have been able to use. Clu would be trapped in this body for a while longer. His skin crawled, burned and itched to be free of it.

_tap swish tap_

What was that sound? Footsteps? Clu’s head swung around.

Clu’s processes ground to a halt.

The program had lightmarks on his face. They were few and elegant, they were regal, resembling the Alpha ISOs of old, and glowing a startling white. He looked like an Alpha, even down to the white robes wrapped around his body where there would have been a grid suit. The program wasn’t wearing his visor, and at first, Clu hadn’t even recognized the function that had been his faithful servant for a thousand cycles.

While Clu was stunned, robbed of the ability to speak, Jarvis didn’t look surprised at all to see him. He regarded Clu with an indifferent expression, he looked Clu up and down with the half hearted scrutiny of someone who thought he could be doing something else much more worth his time.

“Oh, so you’re one too?” He sounded bored, like he had heard this news a thousand times.

“You- I- How- I derezed you!” Clu blurted out when he finally broke the lock on his voice, the sound boomed around the quiet space and made his own ears ring.

“Thank you for stating the obvious.” Jarvis deadpanned.

Clu snarled, furious.

“How dare you use that tone, that sarcasm in front of me-”

Jarvis fixed him with an equally angry glare, flaring up out of his cool demeanor.

“Oh shut up. Do you ever stop talking? The Sea should have fixed that while she had the chance and done away with your vocalizing processes. She’d be doing us all a favor.”

Clu lunged at him. A hand slammed into Jarvis’ throat, and he choked. The program’s back hit the wall behind him so hard his head whipped back, cracking against the surface with a dangerous crunch of breaking pixels.

“You will tell me how you are still alive, slave!” Clu roared in his face.

Clu’s victim shook his head, to try and clear it of the pain and darkness invading the edges of his vision. As he did so a few loose bricks tumbled from the back of his head and clattered against the ground.

Jarvis looked Clu in the eyes, he frowned, and turned up his nose in disgust.

“Your breathe is repulsive.” He said, the comment was clearly meant to infuriate Clu, but it was also true. His breath still smelled like the sea slime that had been stewing in Clu’s insides.

A livid hiss escaped his lips and he grabbed Jarvis by the front of his robes, violently shaking him.

_“Tell me.”_ Clu ordered.

Jarvis grinned at him, continuing on an alternate subject.

“You know, I had always feared death so obsessively, I was a sniveling coward. Now that I’ve died, I can’t imagine why. It isn’t bad at all, I was happier in death, I was finally at peace.” He said. _“I should be thanking you.”_ He spat in Clu’s face. The former administrators hand moved to crush the program’s throat, abruptly shutting him up.

“If you don’t tell me how you are here, I will slowly and painstakingly derez you. I will find out how you returned to life for myself, bring you back, and derez you again at my leisure, as many times as I like!”

Jarvis didn’t flinch, thrash, or struggle under imminent suffocation. He calmly held up the index finger of his left hand. One micro. The User gesture meant.

Reluctantly Clu released him and took a step back, he crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited, an expectant expression on his face.

Jarvis payed him no attention, he busied himself straightening his disheveled robes and brushing away nonexistent dirt. Absorbed in inspecting an invisible imperfection on the material covering his fingers, the way someone would inspect their nails during a particularly uninteresting task, Jarvis began to explain.

“You poisoned the sea, sire. It can’t create new life any longer, so it makes due with the materials already at its disposal.”

Clu blinked at him uncomprehendingly, then narrowed his eyes in anger, a silent demand to stop talking in nonsense and riddles. He used to be able to glare at programs and they would instantly scurry away to do his bidding, in terror of his wrath. Jarvis wasn’t fazed.

Instead Jarvis gave him an exasperated look, and moved his eyes in a way that just might have been a roll. Clu wasn’t sure, he blinked, and if it happened he just nearly missed it entirely.

“For some reason I had thought you were more intelligent, I can’t imagine why.” Jarvis drawled.

Clu’s fists clenched at his sides, his finger itched to tear into the program and rip him to shreds. Instead he grit his teeth and exhaled through his nose like an angry bull. He wanted this information.

“The data of derezzed programs returns to the system. We become loose code and energy waiting to be given shape, raw potential,-”

 

“Yes, every program knows this.” Clu cut him off.

 

“I’m aware, patience.” Jarvis responded, as if he were speaking to a child, before continuing. ”Code and energy which could be transformed into anything. We might be the ground under your feet, the sky over your head, the air you breathe, or even…”

“Even what jarvis?” Clu ground out his impatience at Jarvis’ very deliberate show of taking his own sweet time, Clu’s voice snapped the way he wished the programs pieces would under his feet.

Jarvis took a step nearer, closing the gap between them so that they were nose to nose, and spoke.

“The Sea. She’s bringing back dead programs Clu.”


End file.
